Ontology Design Pattern (ODP)

An Ontology Design Pattern is a partial ontology that addresses a commonly occurring, domain-invariant design issue.

ODPs are reusable templates for solving recurring modeling problems, similar to software design patterns, but for knowledge representation. They capture best practices for representing concepts like events, participation, temporal relations, or provenance in ways that work across domains.

A library of well-designed ODPs accelerates ontology development because engineers don’t have to solve common structural problems from scratch. They can instantiate and adapt existing patterns, then connect them into larger modules.

ODPs range from “micropatterns” (simple, shallow structures for common concepts) to more elaborate templates addressing complex relationships. Recent work has used LLMs to generate hundreds of commonsense micropatterns, creating pattern libraries that can be accessed programmatically.

Related: 06-atom—conceptual-module